Microsoft researcher stores digital life
Published: 12 Feb 2009 14:55 GMT
...with people sitting and gnawing on each piece of data, and you know it is not a task for humans at all. It is unfit for human consumption.
So you should just digitise everything?
You can digitise a substantial amount and for the stuff you can't digitise, it is a question of how much you want. There are feelings about the past but, in terms of the future, it is a question of how much you want to guide people.
You know, there was a survey they had [at the British Library] which showed that people don't really understand email and how to handle it, and file it, and so on. You know, I think that there is not as much knowledge as you think about this. I think a lot of people do not understand what a file is. People say I wrote a letter, but how do I ever find the thing again?
They see it as just like a magic typewriter that lets them write a letter but if they want to change anything, or move it, then: "That's magic". Computers are so easy to use, but then you have a kind of training issue I think.
Some people want to keep everything?
Keep it, absolutely. Do not throw it away.
But you can't keep everything, where would you put it?
Physical stuff? Then there is no reason not to discard everything but once it is digitised, don't throw anything away. Don't ever delete an email.
What do you see as the next step?
I want to see that more and more of the stuff that we've done gets into the product [MrLifeBits]. What happened is that we were on a course to get this implements with [the Microsoft file system] WinFS. Then WinFS got thrown out of Vista. You see all of the stuff that the archivists are talking about [at the conference] really revolves around the data and the metadata.
You see, if I want to send a bunch of my files, then the files will need metadata. Well, metadata I probably already have, and it should be there, but that probably requires a much more robust file system, a database file system.
The problem is that by not having a database [for MyLifeBits], what's happened is [Microsoft has] seven databases now. For media, I've got Zune and another one but, actually, you have four, all pointing at the same song. For Money, I've got a database, for Outlook, I've got a database, for photos, I've got a database. And a lot of these databases have information that, if they could copy each other, using a common database would be much better.
So when you see Steve Ballmer your first words are: "I want a database?"
That's right. The other thing is transaction processing, because a message comes in and it gets lost in the database. Time and place are great search terms, so they are both in there. And 'place' — well, we are seeing great things happening around place.
But I don't think people got what happened in this last decade, in that we ended up with this factor of 1,000 in data-storage capability. Remember we were at a gigabyte and now on a desktop it is a terabyte. And that factor-of-1,000 increase is a big deal. Half-a-billion hard-disk drives were manufactured last year.
Look at this library we are in [the British Library], and with 1,000 drives you probably have the whole thing. We are at another amazing time, and it is a storage thing and the fact that video is becoming so prevalent. That's going to have a major impact.
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